How boat has managed to catch the fancy of Indian millennials: Kalagato

If you’re in India, under 35 and want Value For Money (most Indians) – it’s most likely that you will mention a company called boAt. It’s a brand that’s caught the fancy of Indian millennials by creating a distinct position for itself and on-point delivery with its products.

What does it take to build a brand and rise to the very top in a mere four years – in a market that is commoditised with cheaper no name brands at one end, and premium, global products on the other?

Kalagato takes a look at boAt’s meteoric rise in the last couple of years. According to Kalagato, even as far back as January 2020 one could see how much category share boAt has in terms of e-commerce sales. Before boAt came along, it was difficult to find quality headphones between the price of Rs 600 and Rs 2,000. They built a great product in this niche and established a strong brand using an e-commerce led sales model. Now they are expanding into newer product categories and provide affordable audio accessories and more recently smart watches.

As per Kalagato, a key USP for boAt is providing (justifiable) value at the right price point. A whopping ~75% of the top selling brands (by revenues) are below an average ticket price of Rs 1,500, and about 50% are between Rs 1,000 and Rs 1,500. “BoAt provided a bridge to premium brands – with high tech features made accessible to the “average” Indian,” the Kalagato study states.

In an attempt to go mainstream and appeal to a broader audience, boAt is now going premium, getting models to walk the ramp sporting boAt accessories for the Lakme Fashion week. More importantly, they are also the official ‘audio partners’ for six IPL T20 teams.

According to Kalagato’s study, boAt had almost 40% share of sales volume in 2020, which was way ahead of the rest of the players such as Realme, Boult Audio, JBL, OnePlus and more.

The brand recently raised a massive $100 million from Warburg Pincus, and that capital is expected to be spent on brand building, geographic expansion and extending their product portfolio.